Analytics firm shows low adoption rate for new firmware

Oct 6, 2014 16:09 GMT  ·  By

Apple has been preparing like crazy for the iOS 8 release. It’s even coupled it with the launch of the iPhone 6, and the software update is available OTA, as iOS 7 and iOS 6 before it.

However, people are somewhat reluctant to take the plunge this time around. According to analytics company Fiksu, iOS 8 is seeing a far slower adoption rate than previous releases.

The numbers

One day into the release and less than 9 percent of the population had installed it. That’s compared to iOS 7, which attracted more than 20% of the population to install the firmware. Granted, some half of the globe was sleeping when they rolled out the bits.

Three days in, iOS 8 barely makes it into 20 percent of the iDevices out there. By contrast, iOS 7 was already installed on 37 percent of iDevices. You can’t blame this on the sun being down or bad weather.

Fast forward to today and Fiksu says iOS 8 is being used by 37.56% of the iPopulation. Around this time last year, iOS 7 was on almost 58% of the iPhones and iPads out there. Even iOS 6 had well over 57 percent share in 2012. So what’s going on?

Fiksu can’t be 100% correct (because of various factors), reliable as they are. There are other things contributing to this decline as well. Such as the bad press Apple has been getting lately.

The point 0.1 update

When Apple rolled out iOS 8, people in general reported a good experience. But there were some minor issues that had been discovered and Apple was forced to deal with them rapidly.

So they cooked up the 8.0.1 update and out they sent it. Only to discover that it was buggier than the initial 8.0 release. Then came 8.0.2, and some people still claimed to be having problems.

Now here’s the kicker. Any iOS 7 user attempting to install iOS 8 today will not be able to get the original 8.0 IPSW from Apple. Rather, they’ll be served up iOS 8.0.2. Which they’ve read in the news about, and which may ruin their experience. Whether or not that’s true is beside the point. What’s important to note is that people are much more reluctant to jump to a new firmware these days.

iPhone 4 much?

Perhaps it’s also worth considering that many of the active iOS devices out there are iPhone 4 units. You know, devices that can’t handle iOS 8.

It’s certainly plausible. Many more people have purchased the iPhone 4 than they have the iPhone 3GS. Thus, iOS 7 had a much “older” install base to tap.